Eversheds has advised private equity house Inflexion on their acquisition of Reed & Mackay from ECI Partners LLP and Livingbridge LLP.

The team was led by corporate partners Richard Moulton and James Trevis and comprised: partner Patrick Davis (banking); principal associate Nathan Pritchard (banking); senior associate Colin Askew (tax); and associates Alex McCarney (corporate); Kate Clarke (banking); and Kayode Sodeinde (corporate).

Noerr has advised the Chinese company Shenyang Blue Silver Group (SBS Group) on a strategic investment in Germany. The engineering and machinery company is expected to acquire 85% of the shares in the Dürr Ecoclean Group at the end of the year. With annual sales of around €200 million, Dürr Ecoclean is the global market leader in surface processing systems for industrial parts.

On 25 Juli 2016 the private equity fund Lindsay Goldberg published its purchase of Schur Flexibles Group.

Schur Flexibles Group is a leading manufacturer of flexible packaging products in Europe across a range of end markets including meat & cheese, confectionary, pharmaceutical specialties and tobacco.

Bird & Bird's Nordic offices in Copenhagen and Helsinki have advised Holvi in the acquisition by multinational Spanish banking group, BBVA.

Baker & McKenzie (Gaikokuho Joint Enterprise) acted for Citizen Watch Co., Ltd. ("Citizen Watch") in its recent acquisition of 100% of the equity interest in Frederique Constant Holding S.A. ("Frederique Constant"), the holding company of the watch manufacturing group Frederique Constant headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with subsidiaries in several countries. Frederique Constant owns and operates the luxury wrist watch brands Frederique Constant, Alpina, and DeMonaco. The total value of the transaction has not been disclosed.

Linklaters advised Panasonic Corporation on the acquisition of all shares in the German software company OpenSynergy GmbH. The group of sellers includes, amongst others, the company founders, the management and venture capital firms. The transaction makes OpenSynergy a subsidiary of Panasonic.

OpenSynergy was founded in 2007. The company is based in Berlin and has further offices in Munich and the United States. The high-tech company specialises in embedded automotive software for cockpit solutions.

Filtration Group, Chicago, agreed to acquire the industrial filtration business of MAHLE Group. The transaction involves in particular the jurisdictions in Germany, China, France, Japan, Poland, Romania, Hungary, USA and Great Britain.

Hengeler Mueller advised Filtration Group on this transaction in an integrated team with Paul Hastings (USA), Fangda (China), Slaughter and May (UK), Wolf Theiss (Poland,
Romania, Hungary), Bredin Prat (France) and Mori Hamada (Japan). The Hengeler Mueller team was led by Thomas Meurer (Corporate/M&A) and included partners

WDP and Distrilog are joining forces for the acquisition of logistics service provider Colfridis. The selling shareholders are BNP Paribas Fortis Private Equity and the management of Colfridis. WDP will acquire the real properties of Colfridis located at Londerzeel, and Distrilog will acquire the operational activities of Colfridis. This acquisition has an investment budget of around 22 million euros for the real properties. The transaction is subject to a number of customary conditions precedents (including approval from the Belgian competition authority).

Slaughter and May, working as part of an integrated team with Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and Group General Counsel, Simon Zinger, is advising Dentsu Aegis Network on its acquisition of a majority stake in Merkle Group Inc.  Merkle is the largest independent data analytics, customer relationship management & performance marketing agency in the US, generating $436m of revenues in 2015 and with offices in the US, UK, China and Spain.

Freshfields has advised Cinven on the sale of Old Mutual Wealth Italy to Cinven’s Italian insurance business, Ergo Italia

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP (‘Freshfields’) has advised leading European private equity firm Cinven, on the sale of Old Mutual Wealth Italy, Old Mutual’s Italian wealth management and insurance arm, to Cinven’s Italian insurance business, Ergo Italia.